Creativity and Inspiration for the Godless
Where do we get our creativity and inspiration from? It’s different for everyone. As a teen, I began writing (I also drew and painted some). I wrote many poems railing against “the system”. I wasn’t 100% certain what I even meant by that at the time. Yet I think it had something to do with what I could easily refer to as the Expected Steps of Life that are pushed on us by religious institutions, political figureheads, and our families. After childhood we’re all pushed towards college, then the must-have job that you hate, get married to the first warm body (of the opposite sex) that hangs around for a few months, have 2.5 kids, buy a house, and mess up your kids in a similar fashion that your parents did to you (to a lesser extent if they’re lucky). Continuing the job you hate while saving for a retirement you so you can finally enjoy your money and spouse. These steps are all a part of the “American Dream” and must not be done out of order!
It always vexed me as a young adult that I couldn’t decide how to live my own life without making excuses for it. I assumed I probably wouldn’t get married because I didn’t have to. Those girls that made arrangements for who they’d marry as a back-up by age 27 disgusted me. Just go out there and find the right person. If it takes you 20 years or never, it’ll be okay- but why marry someone just for the sake of getting married?
Many are guilty of pushing these steps as a great moral way to live one’s life. Not morality in it’s intention of using The Golden Rule but in the religious context that seeks to please whatever omnipresence you choose to believe in.
I don’t have a specific point when I lost my faith. I never really believed any of it. And I’ve always been somewhat of a writer and an artist. True, my writing has wained in the past 5 or 6 years. Part of it had to do with the happiness I found with my husband. Pain breeds inspiration. Then again, 98% of my highly exaggerated poems about heartbreak weren’t good at all.
So, Friendly Atheist Hemant put up a post asking readers if they were better at something before losing they’re faith. I still write poetry occasionally and it has become better; surely part of that has to do with age and experience. Yet a large part of it has to do with my growing inspiration from nature, the universe, and all that surrounds us. This has always been an inspiration but it’s become more prevalent in my art. Now I do digital image manipulations (and photography) quite a bit more. Most of my inspiration comes from all walks of science such as the environment, the cosmos, and evolution.
View some of my atheist and science-inspired work:
Many artsy people today tend to be spiritual but not religious. It sounds like a way of saying I don’t believe that shit but I don’t want to make waves or I believe in something but I just can’t define it. All I ask is what’s the point? If it helps you to be creative, I can’t deny the outcome but I just don’t get it. I don’t need religion or a higher power to help me to see the wonders around me. I can do that on my own.
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